PERIOD FROM 1854 TO 1871. 143 



Fish copies of certain letters addressed by the Admiralty to Vice- 

 Admiral Wellesley, Commanding Her Majesty's Naval Forces on the 

 North Atlantic Station, and of a letter from the Colonial Department 

 to the Foreign Office "from which you will see the nature of the 

 instructions to be given to her Majesty's and the Canadian officers 

 who will be employed in maintaining order at the fisheries in the 

 neighborhood of the coasts of Canada." Among these enclosures is 

 a copy of a letter from the Foreign Office to the Secretary of the 

 Admiralt}^, April 30, 1870, from which is taken the following extract: 



The Canadian Government has recently determined, with the 

 concurrence of H. M. Ministers to increase the stringency of the 

 existing practice by dispensing with the warnings hitherto given and 

 seizing at once any vessel detected in violating the law. 



In view of this change and of the questions to wliich it may give 

 rise, I am directed by Lord Granville to request that you will move 

 their Lordships to instruct the officers of Her Majesty's ships em- 

 ployed in the protection of the Fisheries that they are not to seize any 

 vessel unless it is evident and can be clearly proved that the offense 

 of fishing has been committed, and the vessel itself is captured, within 

 three miles of land.'* 



In the letter from the Lords of Admiralty to Vice-Admiral "Wellesley, 

 written on May 5, 1870, pursuant to the foregoing request from the 

 Foreign Of&ce, and transmitting the letter above quoted from, the 

 following language occurs: 



My Lords desire me to remind you of the extreme importance of 

 commanding officers of the ships selected to protect the fisheries, exer- 

 cising the utmost discretion in carrying out their instructions, paying 

 special attention to Lord Granville's observation that no vessel should 

 be seized unless it is evident and can be clearly proved that the offence 

 of fishing has been committed and that the vessel is captured withia 

 three miles of land." 



In Lord Granville's letter of April 30, 1870, to Sir John Young, 

 then Governor General of Canada, transmitting a copy of his letter 

 to the Admiralty respecting these instructions, he says : 



H. M.'s Government do not doubt that your Ministers will agree 

 with them as to the propriety of these instructions and will give cor- 

 responding instructions to the vessels employed by them.^ 



It subsequently appeared that before these instructions were 

 received the vice-admiral had already issued instructions to the com- 

 manders on the coast in which was expressed 



the opinion of her Majesty's government, that the United States have 

 renounced the right of fishing within three miles of a line drawn across 



» Appendix, p. 591. 6 Appendix, p. 592. 



